PORT TOWNSEND – They left New York harbor on June 10 with high hopes and a determination to finish the race, no matter what the cost.
They arrived in Falmouth, England, on Aug. 18, 72 days and 3,500 miles later, winning not only the first Oceans 4 race across the North Atlantic, but becoming the first rowers to row the North Atlantic mainland to mainland.
On Saturday, three of the four OAR Northwest team members returned to the Port Townsend Yacht Club to share their victory.
“We are so excited to be back here,” Greg Spooner said. “The kind of support you showed us made such an impact that when we were on the ocean and talking about terra firma, this place came up often.”
All four are graduates of the University of Puget Sound and members of the university rowing team.
Two years ago, Jordan Hanssen saw a poster for the ocean rowing race and recruited his classmates. After getting their boat last spring, the team ended its first week-long training row on Puget Sound waters in Port Townsend, where they presented a program on their upcoming adventure at the yacht club.
The rowers also trained in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, docking at Port Angeles and Dungeness Bay.
Rowing in the Strait was good training, but it did not prepare them for the brute force of Atlantic, Spooner said.
“In the Pacific, there are 10-to-12-foot swells that lift you up and down peacefully, like being an elevator,” Spooner said. “In the Atlantic, the waves would knock you off your seat.”
Tropical Storm Alberta forced them to hole up in the tiny stern cabin for 18 hours to wait out the hurricane force wind and 50-foot waves, which nearly turned the boat over.
Fortunately, they had set their sea anchor correctly, Hanssen said, and even made progress eastward thanks to the current.
They were able to row the rest of the time, although the two hours on, two hours off schedule left little time eating and sleeping.
But the team members made a point of sending e-mails back home regularly so that supporters could follow their progress, Brad Vickers said.
“If we didn’t send one every six hours, we got hundreds of e-mails from people who were worried something had happened to us,” Vickers said.
The rowers didn’t have to worry about how they were doing – a navigation expert in Seattle monitored the position of the other two boats who stayed in the race and reported it to them.
OAR Northwest never lost its lead, Hanssen said, which he credits to solid preparation and good equipment, including using carbon fiber-coated wooden oars.
“We were the only team that didn’t have trouble with broken oars,” Hanssen said. “Now everyone is required to use wooden oars.”
